STR in public schools unregulated for a decade

Bishnu Prasad Aryal
Kathmandu, June 5

The District Education Committee (DEC), a body to manage the student-teacher ratio (STR) in the government schools, has become defunct for about a decade. As a result, the STR in the public schools is randomly messed up affecting the quality of education against the hundreds of thousands students.

According to the Ministry of Education (MoE), there are 32,130 schools including primary, lower secondary and secondary schools across the country. Number of teachers constitutes a total of 147,000 including 107,000 permanent and 40,000 on relief quotas in these schools with some 7.2 million students. There are about 1.5 million students in some 800,000 institutional (private) schools in the country.

The Education Act provisions STR of 1:40, 1:45 and 1:50 in Himalayan, mid-hill and Tarai regions respectively. Ironically, a primary school at Patalechhap of Bishankhu Narayan VDC in Lalitpur district has a 1:4 STR while many public schools in Tarai districts have 1:201 STR. However, the DEC comprised of elected representatives, district education officer, teachers’ unions, local development officer and guardian’s representative has become defunct since 2001.

The government formulated policy of DEC in paper but it could not be practised at all, said educationist Prof Dr Biddhya Nath Koirala. “Officially, the authority was given to DEC, and practically, it was bestowed to the politicians and teachers unions were affected by political parties,” he said. “Both of them failed to implement the rule.”

Koirala said that STR was one of the major components for playing a role to upgrade the quality of education. “The authority to manage teachers may be given to the local bodies for its betterment. At least, STR and quality of education in public schools at a VDC must be unitary,” he added.

The quality of public schools is deteriorating day by day while private schools are vested to earn money in the name of quality education, said Suprabhat Bhandary, president of the Guardians’ Association Nepal. “The standards of public schools must be upgraded following each measure enshrined in the law,” he said. “It is the state’s negligence over its responsibility to ensure quality and enforce laws.”

Mahashram Sharma, joint-secretary at the Monitoring Division, the MoE, conceded that the STR was not maintained in the public schools effectively. “There must be political commitment and cooperation from teachers’ unions to ensure implementation of laws. The government efforts to manage are not enough though the Ministry is working on it,” he said.

Mohan Gyawali, president of the Nepal Teachers; Union, blamed the government for not working responsibly. “The government lacks will power to work on it and never raises the concern while we are demanding for it owing to the indifferent political approaches towards the issue,” he said.

“The number of schools should be reduced and the management must be strengthened to promote quality. The STR needs to be downed to 1:30,” Gyawali said. “We are ready to cooperate with the government if it takes initiatives,” he said.

Sharma said that they were mapping the real status of the schools under the school reformation programme. “We are preparing to merge schools with low number of students and distribute teachers proportionally in needy schools,” he said. “The process is on pipeline,” he added.